The Copenhagen Conference: Emission Impossible

Published on 8th December 2009

Demonstrators in Copenhagen Photo courtesy

Emission Impossible is what Obama’s preposterous pledge to “cut in emissions” in this week’s Copenhagen conference is shaping up to be. “Climategate” has shown the motivations of the advocates and alarmists are as political as most suspected. The science shows much different conclusions than the “consensus.”

China and India will not agree to economic hara-kiri and new facts will most likely render any attempts at Copenhagen obsolete.

Climate change is real. The earth has been coming out of a 450 year cold era since it bottomed out in the late 1600s. Hundreds of studies have verified the existence of this cold period. The IPCC tried to erase the climate history of the last 1,000 years in its 2001 report--replacing all the peer reviewed studies of past climate with one that fit their needs. The now defunct “hockey stick” graph showed virtually no significant change in temperature of the world over the last 1,000 years. Conveniently the graph then shows a rapid and abrupt increase in global temperature during the last 100 years--supposedly due to our sin of burning fossil fuels and stoking the fires of global warming.

The only “evidence” that human activity is causing global warming has been computer models that take what the people who develop them know about how the earth’s climate system works and attempt to predict the future. They are not evidence. Evidence is something real, something concrete. The creator of the model can make it say whatever the creator wants it to say by adjusting parameters.

This has conjured up all sorts of climate disasters, movies, concerts, fixes and swindles with their varied political and economic benefactors--and victims.

In 2007 there was a study that showed the failings of these forecasts. Models showed that a global warming “fingerprint” exists in the air. This fingerprint is a dramatic warming of the atmosphere, not on the ground but up twenty to fifty thousand feet above the tropics. If this fingerprint is not there then the current global warming theory is wrong. The 2007 study revealed that real world temperature observations by weather balloons over a 50 year period showed no global warming fingerprint, none. Models had grossly overestimated the warming over the tropics. Real world observations trump computer models.

Despite this revelation some continued to trumpet the coming doom if we don’t change our sinful ways. To do otherwise would threaten government grants to colleges and universities, research facilities and government agencies. Large corporations are developing eco-friendly technologies and brokerage houses are looking to cash-in on the evolving carbon trading markets. The UN is looking to use climate treaties to wrestle control of carbon emissions from independent nations. The UN and its leaders will be elevated to effectively ruling the world energy consumption as a one-world government authority.

The climate models say that as the oceans warmed by one degree celsius from the 1980s into the 1990s the amount of heat escaping to space would decrease. More heat would be trapped in the atmosphere. The warming of the oceans was natural. All part of the large multi-decadal temperature changes that have been known for years. If only we had a way to measure the amount of heat going out to space, we could get some answers. We do: the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment Satellite. It was in orbit above the earth measuring outgoing longwave radiation (heat) for sixteen years from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. It is the ultimate climate system umpire.

The models predicted that as the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the amount of heat escaping to space should decrease by 3 watts per square meter—giving the theory of manmade global warming a strong footing.

The satellite data inflicted blow apart this assumption.

As the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the measurements showed that the amount of heat escaping to space increased, not decreased, by 4 watts per square meter. If the atmosphere is not trapping heat generated by warming oceans then there is no manmade global warming taking place. The atmosphere compensated for the additional heat by opening the window a little more.

Now, the theory of global warming is lying on the canvas bloodied and dying. Alarmists will attempt to revive the carcass with even louder cries of impending doom and calls to repent. Science will ultimately prove the winner and the world will bury global warming in an icy grave where it belongs.

By Michael J. Economides and Art Horn

Michael serves CARE (Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy) as a member of its Energy Council. He is one of America's leading energy analysts, a professor at the Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston, and Editor-in-Chief of the Energy Tribune. Art Horn is a meteorologist who has worked for CBS, NBC and ABC.